As much as I dislike the NYT, their multimedia stuff and graphics are really good.

You can see the sense of organization and orderliness in the before photos. In a country which routinely is so concerned with order, the shock must be even greater. Very important questions on what to rebuild, in what sequence, where and how are going to have to be resolved, quickly. Since everything is gone, the amount of re-construction is going to be an economic boom. How they finance it - I dunno.

Well, I for one am enraged at Glenn for making more money than I do. He should be stopped. It's not fair. Or, you know, I suppose I could just not buy anything through his Amazon link. But that would be too easy. Maybe a law against it would be better, so I don't have to worry about having any self-control and stuff.

Dudes--irrespective of the interfaces involved what you are seeing is a wonderful example of pre and post damage assessment--This kind of information is invaluable to emergency responders who in the past had to wait for eyewitness reports and then correlate them--

Go to the EROS site run by USGS--this is a valuable addition to our first response capability

the EROS program uses some 19 different satellites than can be programmed to overfly the damage--its a multinational consortium--first responders can get real time data within hours rather than days--and in the event of an earthquake, the 72 hour doesnt apply--you can only save people within 24 hours. Look up crush syndrome.

Gregory--regretably it is not--we had tornadoes in KY two years ago and the first responders knew what the damage was and where within 4 hours--I have no doubt Japanese officials have this info and can target first response efforts and make a difference

it is not end times--it is using some wonderful technology to save peoples live that 10 years ago would have died miseable deaths.

Please readers--if ground data is geocoded, we have the capacity to use that data in pre and post event data assessment--if such data is not then we get the neat pictures of tragedy--geocoding is essential--and it makes the job of first responders much easier

yeah the website is cool--but please please think of what it does to save people

What really bugs me about Reynolds is his appalling hypocrisy. He has been attacking the Wisconsin teachers continuously.

But he himself exploits his state-paid and tenure-protected job as a teacher in a way that none of the Wisconsin teachers do.

Given his other activites as a semi-journalist and blogger, it would be very difficult for him to spend much of his time on his students, his teaching, or maintaining his scholarship. I would estimate it at less than ten hours a week for 7 months of the year.

But he doesn't do the honorable thing to stop taking taxpayers money and resign his position.

Instead, he exploits the fact that it is difficult to fire him, attackes other people who work much harder and more honorably than he does, and tries very hard to sell his readers a bunch of expensive products all day long.

Given his other activites as a semi-journalist and blogger, it would be very difficult for him to spend much of his time on his students, his teaching, or maintaining his scholarship. I would estimate it at less than ten hours a week for 7 months of the year.

A 60-year-old man has been found on the roof of his floating house nearly 10 miles out at sea, two days after the tsunami that devastated the north-east coast of Japan.

Hiromitsu Shinkawa must have resigned himself to his fate when he was swept away by the retreating tsunami that roared ashore in his home town of Minami Soma in Fukushima prefecture.

As the wave approached, Shinkawa took the fateful decision to return home to collect belongings. Minutes later he was out at sea clinging to a piece of the roof from his own home.

Incredibly, he was spotted by a maritime self-defence force destroyer taking part in the rescue effort as he clung to the wreckage with one hand and waved a self-made red flag with the other. He had been at sea for two days.

But he himself exploits his state-paid and tenure-protected job as a teacher in a way that none of the Wisconsin teachers do.

Given his other activites as a semi-journalist and blogger, it would be very difficult for him to spend much of his time on his students, his teaching, or maintaining his scholarship. I would estimate it at less than ten hours a week for 7 months of the year.

With apologies for feeding this absurd OT ranting, I just want to say that Glenn Reynolds was a professor of mine a few years ago (in 2007 and 2009). He certainly spent the requisite time required, responded well to students' needs, and was an all around very effective professor.

As I understand it, the dean has told him that he can use his writing (blogging and articles) to meet the his requirements as a professor, but he chooses not to (nor have I ever heard him plug, or even mention, his blog to students- I only picked it up because I saw a classmate looking at it and decided to check it out- once I realized what it was, I got hooked, and moved on to harder things, like Althouse).

I don't and wouldn't shop at Prof. Reynolds' Amazon link. I certainly don't have anything against it, it's just that he has a huge readership and I would prefer to give what I'm going to to Althouse, who I read more often anyway. I love this site and try to remember it when I shop at Amazon- Professor Althouse deserves it for creating this amazing community. You're free to disagree and choose not to shop there, though.

Your liking for Professor Reynolds is not shared by his other students.

His rating on ratemyprofessor.com is well below average for his campus, except on the criterion of "easiness," where he excells.

Is Reynolds one of those teachers who should be let go if he weren't protected by seniority?

The first three student comments from the site are reprinted below. They are pretty devastating.

1. "In his class, Professor Reynolds often offers hypotheticals involving the same characters, "Dr. Ellen Smythe" and "Rickey Kraus" and "Pamola Gellur." The problem is that the hypotheticals don't involve the law, but rather three-ways. He punctuates these stories with "heh" and "indeed" and refuses to come out from behind the podium at the end."

2. "I learned more watching Law & Order repeats."

3. "Professor Reynolds is hopeless. He is predictable. He is dreary. And he is prepared to pass judgement upon people using the flimsiest evidence (e.g. anonymous forum comments). Finally, his tendency to end lectures with the word "Heh" is extremely irritating."

lucid, stop polluting every thread on this blog with your inane rantings about Glenn Reynolds. Start your own anti-Reynolds site if you really need to feed your obsession with this guy. No one else gives a shit.

Lucid, I've never trusted ratemyprofessors as a source, and I've never heard my classmates discussing them, either. I assume that they are a fairly skewed sample, and I never heard any complaints about Professor Reynolds in school. I'm surprised that you would take the first one you cite seriously; it's so obviously the work of a teenager (of mind if not body) with a grudge. In case I'm not clear, I will unequivocally state that nothing even remotely close to that was my experience in the two classes that I had with him, nor was it in any way similar to any gossip that I ever heard in my small and closely knit school. Really, grow up.

As for the third, it seems to object to his sense of humor or style, which, obviously, is personal. Believe me, if "dreary" were a reason to let go of professors, there would be very few out there. Additionally, the refernce to passing judgment based on anonymous forum comments suggests to me that this commenter is judging based on his website work, since there are no forum comments at all in law school.

As an aside: His administrative law class was definitely not easy- I scored lower than I anticipated in that class. (The second class was more theoretical and discussion based; I think you could fairly call it easy, and I did quite well. His Constitutional law class, which I didn't take, had a reputation for being difficult.)

In other words, you're being silly. You don't have to believe that I had his class, I mean, for all you know, I'm Reynolds himself in disguise (FYI to my darling Roger J & Shaaark- don't worry, I'm not!), but are commenters on ratemyprofessors really a better source?

IN the last 24 hours, Glenn has tried to sell his readers potassium idodide tablets, flashlights, lanterns, safes, emergency medical supplies and other disaster-related supplies.

Those things are all wise to have on hand if you live in a disaster-prone area, as most of us do. Aside from the iodide, it has nothing to do with nuclear disaster. It certainly doesn't imply in any way that he has knowledge about the Japanese nuclear situation.

Personally, I wish all people would be better prepared for emergencies, as most Japanese people are (as are Americans who live in Japan). AND I wish people would stop using their craving for disaster information to feed the "how bad could the nuke situation get?" porn.

Working in a state college, I occasionally glance at some of the ratings on ratemyprofessor, and in many cases it is very difficult to actually correlate the ratings with the professor that I know.

In fact, on some occasions I see a comment, and I can mor ethan likely identify the actual student that posted it, and know the reason behind it.

In fact, I have seen cases where a certain not-yet-tenured professor was let go by the college for very serious causes, but he had a great rating on that site. Sure, he was banging students in his class, hosting drug and alcohol-fueled parties at his residence (with some underage students present as well), and exchanging good grade for favors, but he had a great rating on that website, so they were stupid to deny him tenure...

Using anonymous internet ratings to determine the value of a professor/instructor/teacher is a joke.

Look around that site. There are many, many, many positive comments about professors. Just none about Glenn Reynolds.

And note that Reynolds did so poorly with the same sample as everyone else. Even if you want to claim that the sample is skewed, Reynolds does very badly in comparison to other professors among the same skewed sample--he does badly in comparative terms with all other things held equal.

(I assume you are able to understand the above sentence?)

Reynolds does very poorly against everyone else getting rated by the same system.

With well below-average and indeed devastating reviews like that, he surely is the kind of teacher whom he argues should be fired.

If we can just get Lucid to complain about Instapundit three more times, Reynolds will have officially received more negative comments in this blog thread than he has received at ratemyprofessors.com in the last seven years.

Just as embarrassing, PaddyO, in a thread about the devastation of a country which is probably the most prepared to handle such devastation, this thread has people railing against emergency preparation.The toll of this quake will be high, but much lower than it would be in most places. That is an important lesson for us to learn.

Yes, lucid, I will address the Reynolds question. I would vote him a raise for pissing you off. Oh, and by the way, I don't believe he is represented by a union. I believe he negotiates his own deal, but then I might be wrong in which case I would simply say that you were insane.

And as I believe we have been saying in various ways, the job of teacher isn't exactly the most taxing of occupations, there is time to do plenty of other stuff every day and certainly all summer. So why not pound sand in your spare time?

you are wrong about the 8% being ADDED to the purchase price or cost of doing business.

it is already factored in as a marketing expense - it's the Affiliates fee that is paid if someone buys an Amazon product on a 3rd-party site. If you buy directly, no one gets the fee and it stays in the pot until someone else claims it by making a purchase from an Affiliate.

Reynolds has a state contract that is negotiated by a teachers union,. It is just another example of his hypocrisy.

The pattern of his student evaluations--below average scores except on the criterion of "Easiness," where he is sharply above average--is often the pattern with a professor who is lazy or barely doing his job.

He doesn't work at his classes hard enough to teach well, so he gets below average scores on teaching, like Reynolds does.

And I do think it is funny that you want to dispute and disqualify the only third-party evidence that we have concerning his competence as a teacher.

You're right, how could I be so closed minded as to not take "third-party evidence", the words of anonymous posters who may or may not actually have taken his class and seem to cling to sex jokes over my own eyes and ears. I stand completely corrected; obviously my own experiences are completely irrelevant.

If you go through the affiliate they get 8%. If you don't Amazon keeps it. That may lower costs and thus prices, but more likely it will just increase profits. It's not mysterious and it's perfectly fair and honest.

That reduces their cost on that transaction and permits them to price lower.

Oy. They are giving him a tiny commission in exchange for cheap advertising. More sales usually means lower cost for all. I await your argument that if Amazon didn't advertise at all, their prices would be even lower.

Reynolds has the protection of tenure, which makes him almost impossible to fire.

He offends me so thoroughly because of his hypocrisy. He has been attacking the Wisconsin teachers. But he is by far one of the worst offenders of the state-teacher-tenuire system.

I am sure that the Wisconsin teachers generally do a good day's work for their pay and that they care about their jobs and that they help their students.

Reynolds appears to use his tenured, taxpayer supported postion to blog and do other things that are unrelated to what he is being paid a state salary to do, but which make him more money, e.g. his Amazon links.

In the private sector, as I have said before, Reynolds's ass would be fired so fast he would leave his underwear behind.

Professors in certain areas make more money than others simply because of market pressures. Attorneys and clinical psychologists, for instance, can make much more in the private market than English and history professors could.

If universities want quality professors in certain areas, they must pay an attractive wage due to market forces. There's no hypocrisy in working hard, becoming an expert in your field and reaping the rewards. In the 1970s at the University of Tennessee, I knew professors that made more than the governor. (They raised the governors salary as a result.)

Should we resort to a communist system so that your average middle school teacher gets paid as much as one of the top law professors?

1) Japan, wow. Most amazing thing is they will spring right back from this. Not much else intelligent to say about it.

2) Lucid, shouldn't feed you, but male or female, it's obvious that if in fact Prof. Reynolds didn't sodomize you in the boiler room bent over an oildrum and leave you there dripping down your leg without so much as a reach around, then you have marvelously conjured this state of mind within yourself, trauma free.

You are a toad, and if you agreed with me you'd still be a toad and I'd have to question a lot of my own beliefs. Objectively you are a bad, low quality poster and i think if you don't improve then all notion of fairness being owed you will fly out the window. So up your game or grab your ankles (again).

3) Re Amazon,

a) You cannot buy the widget any cheaper by not going through Reynolds or Althouse or any other referral. I think you have finally grasped this?

b) Amazon is happy to pay Reynolds because he gives them hits and sales they would not otherwise get. because he tells us of products we might not know about or know we wanted or know that he considered them good.

c) You little rat, you bitch whore, why don't you run to UT or UW and tell on Reynolds and Althouse? Maybe you can get them fired!

Or, more likely, tell us what happened when you tried that.

4) What are your qualifications to judge their job performance? At this time I would assume NIL.

Now, have YOU anything intelligent to say about the tragedy in japan or do we get more of your monomania?

Wake up and fly right, "lucid" (somehow the lefties dig irony in their handles, don't they), or I'll have to do a special on you.